Analysis of polyethylene (PE) pipes ductile failure (ballooning) suggests that it is directly related to the delayed necking phenomena and time to ductile failure of PE pipe can be evaluated as the time to delayed necking. The necking in polyethylene (PE) is studied under displacement control (ramp test) and load control (creep) conditions. In ramp tests the dependence of the yielding and drawing stresses on strain rate are established using specimens of a European PE 100 pipe grade HDPE, It is shown that both stresses decrease with decrease of strain rate and approach a common value, the characteristic stress. In creep tests of the above material, the relation of time-to-necking vs. applied stress is obtained. It is proposed to employ the testing procedure on tensile specimens for estimation of time-to-ductile failure in PE pipes. The characteristic stress is suggested to be an indicator of the ductile-to-brittle transition in failure mechanism.
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